ISLAMABAD: The Awami Workers Party (AWP) has filed a petition in the Islamabad High Court challenging the blockage of its official website by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.
Apart from asking for unblocking of its website, AWP has urged the court to guard the fundamental rights of citizens in online spaces and to compel PTA to exercise its powers of blocking online content strictly in accordance with the law.
The facts leading to the filing of the petition are that on June 03, 2018, in the prelude to the General Elections 2018, AWP’s website (http://awamiworkersparty.org) was suddenly found to have been blocked in Pakistan.
Reports of various digital censorship experts including Digital Rights Foundation and Observatory of Online Network Interference confirmed that the blockage was the result of government censorship.
Since then, the party has been approaching various forums including the PTA, the Election Commission of Pakistan and relevant telecom operators but no relief has been granted to it so far. Left with no other remedy, the party has now challenged the blocking of its website before the Islamabad High Court.
The petition, filed through Advocates Muhammad Haider Imtiaz and Umer Ijaz Gilani, has been fixed for hearing before the Hon’ble Chief Justice of the Islamabad High Court on February 18, 2019.
In its petition, the AWP has placed reliance upon IHC’s own 2018 judgment against shutdowns of telecom networks which were being illegally ordered by the federal government.
In that judgment, reported as PLD 2018 Islamabad 243, (then) Justice Athar Minallah had taken notice of telecom network shutdowns which were being carried out by PTA in violation of Section 54 of the Pakistan Telecommunications (Reorganization) Act, 1996.
AWP has argued that website blocking is a similarly grave infringement of the fundamental rights of internet users which is being carried out in violation of Section 37 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 (PECA) and S. 6 of the Pakistan Telecommunications (Reorganization) Act, 1996.
Under these legal provisions, PTA is bound to provide prior notice and a fair hearing to anyone whose website it intends to blocks. Furthermore, it is mandatory for PTA to give reasoned orders in relation to blocking of online content, against which statutory remedies have also been provided by law.
According to the figures disclosed by PTA in its 2018 Annual Report and cited in the petition, there are, at present, over 800,000 websites which have been blocked by PTA. In almost no case have the requirements of the above-mentioned legal provisions been complied with.
It may be recalled that when PECA was being debated outside and inside the Parliament in 2016, an important provision, S. 37(2), was inserted in the law to ensure that PTA officials would not abuse the powers being conferred upon them for blocking of websites.
This provision made it mandatory for PTA to adopt rules for structuring and regulating its powers. Three years down the lane, PTA is actively exercising its power under Section 37 of PECA, however, no rules for regulating the exercise of this power have been framed, as per the knowledge of the petitioner.
AWP has asked the High Court to compel PTA to immediately frame rules for ensuring fairness and transparency in the process, as required by the Parliament.
